‘If it please you to dine with us’ there is tension, and Shylock is instantly offended because he is Jewish and the Jewish religion can't eat pork so Bassanio could have said that to make Shylock angry.
Shylock makes it clear why he hates Antonio:
‘I hate him for he is a Christian; but more, for that in low simplicity, he lends out money gratis, and brings down’.
Shylock hates Antonio because, he is a Christian and when he loans people money he doesn’t charge interest, as Jews had to do that as that was there only way of making money. Shakespeare also used the image of a smiling villain ‘Like a villain with a smiling cheek’. When Shylock says ‘Let the forfeit be nominated for an equal pound of your fair flesh’ we wonder if he is being serious as if he took a pound of flesh from Antonio he would eventually bleed to death. However, Shylock's aside, in which he admits his reason for the loan, makes it clear that he is after revenge. When Bassanio is talking about Shylock with Antonio he says ‘Like not fair terms in a villains mind’ by that he is being wary of what Shylock can do. There is also some alliteration when shylock says
‘If I can catch him once upon the hip I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bare him’. When Shylock says ‘ancient grudge’ he emphasizes how long this has been going on for. Overall an Elizabethan audience would just laugh at him and not care what he is going through but a modern audience would feel sorry for Shylock as he keeps on getting put down by Antonio because he says that he will ‘spit upon his gabardine’.
In act 2 scene 2 Shylock tells Jessica to look after the house while he dines with Bassanio, he says
‘Jessica my girl, look to my house. I am right loathe to go; there is some ill a-brewing towards my rest, for I did dream of money bags tonight’.
What Shylock is saying is that he is going to dinner with Bassanio reluctantly. Jessica doesn’t really like living with Shylock as she says ‘Our house is hell’. This makes the audience feel sympathy for Shylock as his own daughter doesn't like living with him, also there is a use of alliteration which emphasizes her unhappiness at living in their house.
Most people would feel sympathy, but an Elizabethan audience wouldn't, in fact they would find it amusing for Shylock when his daughter runs away with Lorenzo (the Christian). However even after his daughter has just ran away with a Christian, it appears that he is more worried about his ducats. If Shylock got his daughter back then I think that he would ask for the money back first as he is more concerned about his money than his daughter.
In Act 3 Scene 1 Shylock shocks the audience through his language, it appears he is more concerned about losing his money
‘Thou stickest a dagger in me: I shall never see my gold again: fourscore ducats at a sitting! Fourscore ducats’. Also he says ‘My own flesh and blood to rebel’. He is disgraced by what his daughter has done.
Shylock is obsessed with revenge and repeats the phrase ‘let him look to his bond’ three times so he is obviously angry. Shylock is now at breaking point when he says his speech about how Jews and Christians are similar
‘I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions’ The first part of the speech gains sympathy for him from modern audience, but this is lost when it's clear he's only using the argument to justify revenge. Shylock is really happy to hear that Antonio has lost another ship when Tubal says ‘Hath an argosy cast away’. Although Shylock can be seen negatively as cold and calculating, he does show affection to Leah when he says
‘I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor: I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys’. Afterwards Shylock becomes even more serious about the forfeit ‘I will have the heart of him, if he forfeit.’ He threatens Antonio here and appears the villain.
Shylock feels that he is justified in his decision when Antonio pleads ‘Hear me yet, good Shylock’.
Shylock replies
‘I’ll have my bond, speak not against my bond… Thou call’st me dog before thou had’st a cause but since I am a dog, beware my fangs’. Shylock has said that because Antonio has signed the bond and he has been harsh to Shylock in the past therefore he is telling Antonio to be prepared to feel his wrath. There is repletion which suggests he is obsessed with revenge.
However I believe that Shylock doesn’t get a fair trial as the judge and others are doing everything they can to save Antonio and trap Shylock by saying, that if a foreigner (Shylock) plots to kill a venetian (Antonio), then the punishment is that the foreigners wealth should be confiscated and they would also force him to change his religion to Christianity. At the end of the scene Shylock appears to be a broken man.
Shylock has been a strong presence in the play, even though he only appears in 5 scenes. To an Elizabethan audience, he would have been seen as a villain. Since the holocaust however, there has been more sympathy for the Jews, and audiences have responded differently to Shylock. Shylock, throughout the play, appears to be cold and ruthless but in some ways this is understandable as he has to stand his ground else Antonio won’t take him seriously about the bond until the trial scene where he was a broken man. In that scene Shylock is the saddest man you will ever see because he sharpens his knife to cut Antonio as agreed in the bond but someone says if he cuts a Christian (Antonio) then he will lose all of his money and land, so he breaks down because he wouldn’t have done it he just wanted to look like he could go through with it.
By Brandon Mclaren
